Meghan Markle’s Royal Wedding Is Not Your Average Disney Princess Fantasy

In this op-ed, author and lawyer Jill Filipovic explains why Meghan Markle’s wedding is a step in the right direction.

It’s 2018 and people around the world are counting down the days until a civilian woman metamorphoses into a royal princess. Meghan Markle, the American actress set to marry Prince Harry on Saturday, is on her face an old-school dream: The beauty swept off to Buckingham Palace, a kind of modern-day Grace Kelly abandoning her acting career for happily ever after with her prince.

The entire spectacle of a royal wedding, and the very existence of a royal family, is deeply silly. It is bizarre that, in the modern world, we still care about princes and princesses (even if they are technically “duchesses”). We still wake up early on a Saturday to see which tiara the newly inducted member of the family will wear (and which absurd hats the existing members will don). But then, it’s equally regressive that girls today are still raised on a steady diet of Disney princesses and pink toys. In what is a sure sign that one is more of an embryo than a grown woman ready to take on the serious financial, legal, and familial obligations of a marriage, a not-insignificant number of adult women have Disney-princess-themed weddings, and purchase Disney-princess-inspired wedding dresses. The cartoonish idea that a wedding is the most important day of a woman’s life, and a crucial opportunity for a bride to embrace her greatest life’s ambition (special beautiful magical princess), persists to a stunning degree.

The fantasy of a wedding that makes you “feel like a princess” is the hope for some people, but the reality is more complicated — and shows just how much aspirational womanhood has evolved.

If you look a little closer at the flurry of excitement around Meghan and Harry,this particular princess isn’t such a cartoon character. The British press has launched a tenacious, invasive, and racist campaign to humiliate Meghan’s family. As is the case for most of us, the extended members of Meghan’s clan include some relatively rational and steady people, and some who are a bit more volatile, self-promoting, or simply ignorant of the ways of tabloid media. The British tabloids have zeroed in on the family members who don’t fit particular British ideals of class and refinement. They hounded Meghan’s father so badly that he’s not attending his daughter’s wedding, allegedly because of health issues, but it seems clear enough that it’s a response to the unyielding and cruel scrutiny. We don’t know his motivations, but it stands to reason that he wants to protect his daughter on what should be a joyful, special day. Other further-flung family members of hers seem less careful, reportedly whining to the press about being excluded from the festivities and even bad-mouthing Meghan herself.

It’s hard not to feel bad for her, even if she is a future royal. Who among us hasn’t had an event (even if it was just Thanksgiving dinner) nearly ruined by an idiot uncle or a wayward cousin with whom we are humiliated to share DNA?

But the royal wedding is also, in its own strange way, a step in the right direction. It’s always been somewhat political, and the process of picking a woman deemed worthy of royal status has always reflected the most archaic and unequal of gender expectations. When Diana, Prince Harry’s mother, married Prince Charles, she was just 20 years old, and rumors swirled that the queen selected her for Charles for that exact reason — she was innocent and had not before been in a serious relationship. The possibility that Diana had slept with Charles before the wedding became a topic of public scrutiny.

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No one is under the impression that Meghan or Harry have never had sex, and no one cares. Meghan is 36, divorced, American, and of mixed racial heritage. She is a woman who has thrived in her own career, entirely unrelated to British high society, and built a fabulous independent life for herself. She wasn’t hand-picked by the queen, and she has also used her celebrity status to do some good, advocating for important humanitarian causes.

Meghan, then, gives girls and young women a different kind of princess to admire. There’s no reason, at this point in history, to aspire to be a princess (at least if you’re over the age of 4). And there is probably no such thing as a feminist princess (Meghan is reportedly leaving acting to princess full time, which isn’t exactly an independent woman power move). But there are plenty of bold, successful, autonomous women with complicated families and imperfect lives whose hard work, talent, and kindness make them commendable indeed. Against the full weight of history, one of them is marrying into the royal family. That in and of itself isn’t an accomplishment — marriage almost never is — but it reflects a much broader shift in what’s considered acceptable for women, even in the most traditional strongholds of British conservatism.

We should all get over our princess fetish. But if we’re going to choose a princess to fawn over, we could do a lot worse than Meghan Markle.